Principal Technical Program Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

About [Employer]

[Employer] has been one of the most loved brands in developer tooling, trusted by more than 20 million monthly users and over 20 billion container image pulls. From solo founders to the world's largest companies, developers rely on [Employer] to build, share, and run their applications across our suite of products including [Employer] Desktop, [Employer] Hub, and [Employer] Scout.We are a globally distributed, remote-first team building the tools that define how software gets built and delivered. As AI agents redefine software development, [Employer] is at the center of that shift, providing the sandboxed environments, verified images, and secure infrastructure that make autonomous workflows trustworthy by default.

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About the Role

[Employer]'s Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team embeds senior engineers inside our most strategic customers to solve their hardest deployment, integration, and adoption problems. FDEs then bring what they learn back to [Employer] Product and Engineering so that every customer benefits.

As the Principal Technical Program Manager for FDE, you define what good looks like for the organization and run the business that delivers it. You define the standards for how FDE plans, commits, delivers, and measures quality. You own the operating rhythm, track commitments [Employer] has made to customers, the commitments [Employer] Engineering has made to FDE, and the timelines and resourcing behind them.

This is a senior role that works with stakeholders across the business to drive outcomes for Dockers most important customers. FDE is where [Employer] proves it can deliver for the customers that matter most while the technology around us changes quickly. You will set the standard for how a small team of senior engineers earns and keeps the trust of customers, and you will make what they learn useful to the whole company. The practices you establish will become the model for how [Employer] engages with its largest, most complex customers.

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Responsibilities

Define What Good Looks Like

• Define the FDE delivery standards, engagement model, and quality bar, and write them down so engagements are consistent across customers, regions, and engineers.
• Decide which metrics matter for FDE, set targets, and revise them as the team learns.
• Turn lessons from each engagement into reusable practice and product improvements.

Run the FDE Business

• Give executives a clear account of what is on track, what is at risk, what decision is needed, and from whom.
• Own FDE capacity management and staffing plans with FDE leadership and recruiting: which engineers are aligned to which customers, where the gaps are, where and when to hire to stay ahead of demand.

Own Customer and Engineering Commitments

• Instrument every commitment [Employer] has made to FDE customers, and every commitment [Employer] Product and Engineering teams have made to FDE.
• Track commitments, map dependencies across teams, and surface risks early enough to act on them.
• Negotiate and confirm dates with teams that run on their own planning processes, and hold them to those dates.

Influence Across [Employer]

• Represent FDE with Product and Engineering leadership. Make sure customer needs are well defined using data, and that product decisions map to achievable FDEs action.
• Improve the internal processes that slow collaboration between Field, Product, and Engineering, and bring those improvements to the wider company when they work.
• Present FDE results and risks to [Employer] executives and customer stakeholders.

Lead the Program Practice

• Set priorities for junior TPMs, define the reporting FDE needs, and mentor them in program management practice.
• Choose the tools and standards FDE uses to track work.
• May need to take part in the paid on-call rotation; respond to incidents, debug production issues, and drive systemic improvements in reliability.

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Qualifications

Required

• 10+ years of technical program management experience, including 4+ years at Staff level or above, supporting customer-facing engineering, professional services, or field engineering teams.
• A track record of delivering commitments on schedule for enterprise customers, including contractual or executive-visible deadlines.
• Experience defining standards, quality bars, and operating processes that other teams adopted.
• Experience running dependencies across many engineering teams that you do not manage, and getting reliable dates from them through influence.
• Strong technical background in cloud platforms, containers, and modern software delivery. You can read a design, challenge an estimate, and tell a real blocker from a vague one.
• Experience choosing metrics and setting targets, including working with incomplete data and deciding what is good enough to act on.
• Executive communication skills, with the ability to deliver difficult news early and clearly to customer stakeholders, [Employer] leaders, and engineers.
• High agency and comfort working autonomously in a distributed, remote-first company where processes are still being defined.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Occasional travel to customer sites and to [Employer] team gatherings.

Bonus Qualifications

• Prior experience supporting a Forward Deployed Engineering, Professional Services, Solutions Engineering, or Customer Engineering organization.
• Familiarity with the agentic AI ecosystem, including coding agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and enterprise requirements for security and governance of AI workloads.
• Experience with regulated or compliance-driven customers in financial services, healthcare, government, or similar sectors.
• Experience at a developer tools, infrastructure software, or platform company.
• Familiarity with [Employer] products, Kubernetes, and cloud-native development platforms.

What Success Looks Like

• FDE has written delivery standards, a quality bar, and KPI targets that FDEs, Field, Product, and Engineering all know and use.
• Every customer commitment and every [Employer] engineering commitment to FDE has an owner and a date, and strategic customer deadlines are met.
• FDE operating reviews run weekly, produce decisions, and close their actions.
• FDE capacity, hiring, and customer alignment are planned ahead of demand.

Visa sponsorship: [Employer] considers visa sponsorship on a case-by-case basis based on business needs.

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Compensation & Equity

All full-time roles include equity. Final compensation is determined on factors including but not limited to experience, skills, qualifications, and location.

United States: $162,505 - $254,650 base

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Posting Information

• Open vacancy: This posting is for an existing open role.
• AI in hiring: [Employer] may use AI-assisted tools during our recruiting process.
• Interview recordings: Candidates will be invited to opt in to interview recordings to support interviewer calibration and consistent evaluations. Recordings are optional and require explicit consent.

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Perks & Benefits

• Remote-first by design – Work from your home, with offices in Seattle and Paris for connection and collaboration.
• Flexibility that fits your life – We trust you to manage your schedule while delivering great work.
• Time to recharge – Generous PTO, designated quarterly Whaleness Days, and a designated end-of-year Whaleness break.
• Home office support – Set up your workspace for comfort and success.
• Technology stipend – Equivalent to US$100 net per month to help support your work.
• Learning & development – Annual stipend for conferences, courses, certifications, and continued learning.
• Parental leave – 16 weeks of paid parental leave after six months of employment.
• Equity for all full-time employees – Share in [Employer]'s long-term success as we continue to grow.
• Comprehensive benefits – Medical, retirement, and paid holidays vary by country.
• [Employer] swag – Because representing the whale never gets old.

[Employer] is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a team that reflects a broad range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We believe diverse teams build better products, make better decisions, and better serve our global community.

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